Yo, granny

Forget zoo visits and library day.
Aged-care residents are joining the New Age
with hip-hop, belly dancing, aromatherapy
and reiki. Richard Kerbaj reports.

Punching the air to the
Village People’s feisty
number Go West seems
strangely in place at
South Melbourne’s
Napier Street Hostel,
where a group of elderly residents
are going through a late morning
exercise session — sitting down.

Their instructor, Anne-Marie
Wilton, reminds them to "breathe
in through your nose and out
through your mouth" at the start
of each new movement, between
attending to their inquiries and
correcting their techniques.

Having exhausted her
repertoire during the 15-minute
class — everything from fingertapping
to ankle rotating —
Wilton, also lifestyle and daycentre
manager at the hostel,
collectively asks the 12
participants for suggestions. All
eyes dart to Frances, a diminutive
90-year-old woman, outstretching
her arms in a swimming motion
that gained her a qualification in
the 100 metre freestyle finals at
the 1932 Olympics.

"Your balance goes a bit as you
get older," says Frances, after her
workout. "So there’s a limit to
what you can do."

Such physical limitations that
can lead to boredom and
helplessness among aged-care
centre residents are being
overcome through the
introduction of New Age
programs. Mundane tours of
botanical gardens and the zoo are
finally giving way to more exotic
experiences, ranging from music
therapy, reiki and belly dancing,
through to Tai Chi, spas and foot
massages.

In a way, the shift towards the
New Age for the old-aged should
be regarded as a natural
transition, says Greg Mundy, chief
executive of Aged and
Community Services Australia
(ACSA), a peak body representing
community organisations that
provide residential and
community care services to the
elderly.

"Older people are in some
sense no different to anyone else
in the community," he says. "(So)
the currents and fashions that
sweep through the rest of society
don’t leave aged care untouched."

Lust for life

Popular New Age activities of
aged-care homes:

Aromatherapy

Belly dancing

Oil massages

Music therapy

Tai Chi

Acquainting residents with
"interesting" and "engaging"
lifestyle initiatives, says Mundy, is
a measure for sidestepping
environmental dilemmas such as
loneliness and depression.

Activities coordinator at
Bundoora’s Vasey House Hostel,
Barbara McCabe, says along with
improving the "physical and
social environment", lifestyle
activities aim to satisfy the needs
of residents and help maintain
their "community links".

The activities provide the
residents with something "to look
forward to, and perhaps help
them reach the potential that they
might not have reached, even
though they’re in old age".

In the past three years, Vasey
House residents have enjoyed
sessions of fortune-telling and
tarot card reading, in-house
fashion parades, and belly
dancing lessons that gave them
an insight into the Eastern art’s
history, along with pointers on
shimmies and hip-flicks.

The 48 residents have even
held the occasional "rap night".
Given the "low-care" nature of
hostels, residents are able to use
their mobility by becoming
involved in a broader range of
programs than those living at
nursing homes. However, that’s
not to say that "high-care"
facilities are uncreative in their
offerings.

At the Glen Waverley Nursing
Home, aromatherapy has been on
the daily agenda for the past three
years, says lifestyle coordinator
Glenda Newnham. In addition to
fostering "natural sleep" and
mental stimulation, the treatment
can "reduce the reliance on pain
killers", she says. "Which is
something we’re trying to do all
across the board in aged care."

Once a week, the Glen
Waverley residents can indulge in
a "pampering program", devised
to enrich their "feeling of self-worth"
through facials and foot
massages. That’s not to mention
the regular music therapy
sessions encouraging them to
sing along and lapse into reverie
mode.

Yet, despite the benefits of
these programs within homes and
hostels, some new arrivals who
are "quite resistive to care" require
up to three months of "emotional
support" before they become
sociable and involved in activities,
says Nina Desilva, manager of
Bentleigh Manor, where Tai Chi
was introduced recently.

Desilva says the implications
of moving into a care facility can
be fairly overwhelming for
residents. "Quite often, they are
moving out of a home that they’ve
probably occupied with a spouse,
or late spouse, for some 40, 50
years ... and the transition can be
quite difficult for them.

"They can feel anger, sadness,
loss, all the feelings of
bereavements. They feel like
they’re losing their home, their
independence," she says.

The Diversional Therapy
Association of Victoria, which
advocates the spiritual, cultural,
recreational and psychological
wellbeing of residents through
lifestyle programs based on
"individual needs", is moving to
introduce activities such as
colour therapy, reiki, therapeutic
touch, and relaxation into agedcare
centres in an effort to create
a more "homely" atmosphere,
says president Marlene Usher-
Sambell.

"Nursing homes aren’t as scary
as they used to be. (We’re) trying
to make them as homely as
possible, and trying to make
them (less) sterile and
hospitalised," she says.
Admittedly, there are some
"old-school" directors of nursing
who prefer to run nursing homes
as "hospitals and not as homes",
says Usher-Sambell. "Some of the
old schools have to be taught
that there are other ways of
(operating), and that they
shouldn’t be frightened of new
things."

Someone clearly not afraid of
encouraging residents to
experiment with new things, as it
were, is Napier Street’s Wilton. In
April, she organised the
installation of two internet-linked
computers in an attempt to
"address social isolation".

"For a place like ours, where
people are becoming more frail
and less able to get out into the
community, we’re bringing the
community to us through
information technology," says
Wilton.

The computers, which also
encourage the grandchildren of
the residents to visit more
frequently says Wilton, seemed a
little intimidating to residents at
first.

Betty, 77, was one such
resident. But having overcome the
fear of experiencing "new
technology", she now logs on
quite regularly. She’s only just
getting the hang of surfing the
net, yet she seems confident in
the games department.

Clearly, the variety of lifestyle
programs being offered at agedcare
centres is a measure for
creating a better environment. Yet
how will these programs evolve in
years to come?

ACSA’s Mundy says: "As we get
new generations coming into
residential care — and they’ll be
larger ones, too — there will be
more diversity in the things that
they’re interested in."

He says future generations,
particularly baby boomers, will be
"more demanding" as customers.

Unfortunately lifestyle
programs, which heavily
contribute to the "quality of a
resident’s life", are most
"vulnerable" to governmental
funding pressure, says Mundy,
who fears an unfavourable shift
towards a user-pays scheme.